The Scotts

As spring approaches and the days get warmer and longer, I
can’t help thinking back to when I grew up in Culver City. I
lived in a house that was very clean and very in order. No
dirt anywhere, if ever there was a bathroom floor you could
eat off of it, would be my mom’s, in fact my mom believed if
you were going to clean a floor you would do it on your
hands and knees so you could really see the dirt. Nope,
there would be no mops in her house. I liked to play outside
in the dirt with my fleet of trucks but when I did, they
would all have to be cleaned before I brought them back in
the house to be put carefully back into my bedroom on
display. Of course that took all the fun out of it. But,
everything was in order including the tools in my dad’s
workshop all neatly hung on pegboard and free of rust.

But my childhood friend’s home, the Scotts, was about as
opposite as you could get from mine. Maybe it was the sheer
quantity of boys in the house or just that they were
different than my family and me.

Their parents were Wilma and Harry and their kids Andy the
oldest, then Madaline the only daughter, Mike, who was in my
grade in school and lastly Paul the youngest. Harry had the
distinction of working at the nearby MGM studios and one
night sitting in their living room, drinking Irish whisky,
was none other than Richard Harris, both being the Irish
lads that they were.

Now while I was sort of a wuss they were all rough and
tumble kind of kids. While they all were going to play
football, I was going to be in track. And for good reason,
because being a wuss lent itself at times to the necessity
of being able to out run anyone, including my dad.

Yes, they lived in a completely different environment than
what I was used to. While I was the kind of kid who would
build models and preserve them and hang them up on the wall
or put them carefully on a shelf, the Scotts would build
things for an entirely different reason, to blow them up.
Fire crackers and bang site seemed to be perpetually in
abundance. The yard was sprinkled with the carcasses of
models and things long since mangled, broken, burnt and
destroyed. Now while my room had everything in place and the
bed neatly made each and every day by my mom, the Scotts
looked more like the Hindenburg had just landed. While my
electric trains cars were neatly put back in each and every
box when not in use, theirs were thrown all together in the
corner of a closet. While my dad’s garage was clean and
swept up, their garage was full of stuff, the garage door
long since having served a useful life and held up with a
two by four, tools rusting and scattered about. My bicycle
was clean and polished while theirs were made up of parts
from several different years the fenders long since having
been removed or as they would say, “modified” a word that
held a lot of meaning when you were seven. I didn’t know it
then but this was a precursor to what their cars would look
like when we reached our teens.

And they played these interesting games with each other
like, who ever had the remote control had power over the TV
set. And so that person would wait till everyone got
interested in a show, then switch the channel on purpose and
no one could say a thing about it ‘cause that was the rule.
So it was a wonder to me how differently people lived and I
actually cherished their freedom to not give a fig about
objects. Now their mother, Wilma, would try to keep some
semblance of order but I think by the third boy she had just
given up. The one and only thing that she could instill in
them was not to use a cuss word, so “sugar” would be bandied
about quite often in its place. They also had an unusual
rule I thought, if you found money lying on the side walk,
you had to split it with the person you were with. And on at
least two occasions Mike reluctantly split the find with me.

Now Wilma, could not own a possession that the boys had not
marred or messed up in some way. But, she did have these two
prized sconces that sat up high above the fire place with
hand-blown antique glass covers. And once while Wilma was
away, we were all sitting in the living room as Paul
notienatley was throwing a baseball up against the wall.
And, well, he hit one of the globes and broke it. A panic
filled the room and the decision was made to board our
bicycles and head to the Five and Dime store to replace it.
It was always fun to go somewhere, other than to school, on
your bicycles especially if you were on a mission and since
she was coming home that very afternoon this was a mission
of highest import. (Continued on page 3) (Page 1)

We hope you enjoyed our newest story and I have to say this
one is mostly true. I have been friends with Paul Scott till
he moved to Oregon few years ago. The other Scott siblings
have scattered about but are doing fine. Well it remains a
tough market for most small business but somehow we are
holding on. We did our first 30 second TV commercial a month
or so ago and it can be seen on our web site, of course it
was humorous. And a third documentary is currently being
done on me, the shop and my artwork and the two earlier ones
can be seen on our web site. Lots of small business are now
in grave trouble so consider using them whenever possible.
Your money stays in town and you usually get better service
anyway.

The newsletter

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TV Antennas are going strong!

Well it never really left but only got better. Gone are
the days of ghosts and snow. Every picture now is as good as
every other channel no matter if you have an old picture
tube type set from the 80’s or 90’s. And now that there are
more and more ways to watch TV without a satellite or cable
line, we are installing more antennas again. With 175
channels over the air and with the picture quality better
then Satellite and much better then cable, (because they
suppress the signal) we now have the clearest picture since
the beginning of television. And we even sell a DVR for
antenna users as well. So you can easily record all of your
shows and fast forward through the commercials in different
speeds and it will be recorded in full HDTV can’t do that
with a VCR.

New TV Sales,

We continue to match or beat prices on new TV sets and have
the knowledge to do the legwork for you. Our sets are
usually newer than the big box stores. Ever watch a box car
go rattling by, clickity-clank. And we have the knowledge to
help you find the right product for you and not waste your
money. Who do we recommend over all? LG, which is Zenith,
the last partly owned American Company. But we also sell
Samsung, Sony and many of the cheap makes as well.

Art work

For a limited time, if you mention this newsletter, the
soft cover version is being offered for $19.95. I will be
publishing an updated version of my book of short stories
with all the newest ones soon as well. There are a few
copies left of the first edition for you first addition book
collectors out there. I made Van Gogh’s Starry Night in
nails and tacks and it immediately sold for $2500.00 so
version 2 has now been finished and is available along with
an original nail piece “Shooting Star.” Can be seen now on
our web site czappa.com

Tape Duplication

Remember that if you do not back up your videotapes
someday your camcorder is going to break. And some
camcorders like 8mm, Digi 8 are no longer made. But we still
maintain all of the necessary units so we can save all of
those home movies for you. We can even copy movies from your
cell phone or digital camera. And remember we are one of the
few shops to transfer audio as well, reel to reel, records,
cassette and even 8 track. One of our competitors offered a
special recently for tape duplication, but after figuring
out the discount the people who bought them were paying the
same as our everyday price on duplication.

(Page 2)

(Continued from page 1)

They had a drive
way that sloped down to the street about ten feet at the end
and we all considered leaving their house down the drive way
as taking off on an aircraft carrier. And at the end,

just below the slope, Mike would always lift off the front
end of his bike as if to take off, but this day when he came
down, the handle bars broke in two and he ended up landing
on that part of your body that no boy wants to land on. And
after several minutes of over dramatic moaning and groaning,
we did what needed to be done and had fashioned a new handle
bar out of a wooden broom, duck tape and pipe clamps. One
might have thought he would have been more careful as
brother Paul had done the exact same thing not two months
before.

I always hated to go to the Five and Dime with them as they
always thought ahead and had some money to spend. And they
inevitably would spend it on a pea shooter and peas, which
they would then proceed to shoot at me. Nothing like a wet
pea hitting you in the back of the neck.

Now what we found at the Five and Dime was not even remotely
close to the fine vintage globe that had been broken, but
there was always enternal hope that she just would not
notice. Upon arrival, she just new walking in the living
room that something was amiss, she could just feel it in the
air, and then noticed it, the un-matched globes. She broke
out in a quite whimper that continued to escalate as she
said, “I can’t have anything nice in this house.” Which
ended up in a loud shrill followed by, “Who done it.” All
eyes pointed to Paul. I couldn’t help thinking that was
probably better that it was him as he was the baby of the
family and had the notoriety of the one who fell out of his
high chair and landed on his head when he was little.
Perhaps, I thought, that might still carry some weight.

But the one thing we had in common that bound us together,
as different as we were, was the fact that we were all
Catholics. And so it was that each Thursday after school at
Betsy Ross Elementary all us Catholic children were rounded
up and greeted at the exit gate by the nuns who would cart
us off for religious training. This wouldn’t have been as
bad if there had been a few cute girls in class but I guess
they were all Baptists or Lutherans. One lady who often
would pick us up in her station wagon had a young child that
would stare at us the whole way to church and her car had
that strong smell of crackers. I thought the whole way that
I hoped I did not have to have kids when I got older. And on
Saturday mornings we would again be sent back to church for
more religious training. The Saturday roundup was the worset
as after the training we would be sent into the church to
sing religious songs, the last thing a young boy would want
to be doing on a Saturday afternoon.

The outcome of all this effort would be our first communion
and then later, confirmation. Now I had Jewish friends and I
liked the idea of the Bar Mitzvah. It at least seemed to
have a purpose, where, as I understood it, you were to put
away your children’s toys and now were to become a man.
Confirmation was not like that, it was all about becoming a
soldier of God. They didn’t issue us arms or anything but
still we were soldiers of God.

Now I know things are different in the Catholic Church. We
can now eat meat on Fridays, the worst day of the week for
me because back then we would always have to eat fish. And
my mom, all though a great cook, well, fried fish was not
her strong point. In fact every Friday I would get a
headache from the smell. They did come out with fish hot
dogs for us Catholics, which always seemed to be cheating
somehow, but they also tasted like fish. And it might have
been a different experience if they actually taught some
morals. But even Sunday mass was given in Latin and I had no
idea what they were saying.

So it was my fate that I would become friends with the
Scott’s and spend time at the house where you could do just
about anything. I could do all the things that you couldn’t
do at my house. You could even put your feet up on the couch
and not have to put down the toilet seat. Years later when I
joined a fraternity I realized how wonderful that kind of
freedom really is because it was just like living there.

And these days, I have a completely different view of the
Scotts because my daughter and her husband, three boys and
one girl have come to live with me. There are now broken
toys, parts of army soldier arms, bullets and just about
anything else you can find in the flower beds. I have lost
count of how many windows I have had to replace and some of
my tools, if I can find them, have a coat of rust on them. I
am waiting for the day when my daughter, like Wilma, just
gives up. Any minute now, any minute.

The end

(Page 3)

William Czappa

All rights
reserved

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The art Web site is:
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